this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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linuxmemes

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I use Arch btw


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[–] [email protected] 139 points 3 months ago (9 children)

The more time I spend with Linux the more I realize that Distro doesn’t matter, GUI doesn’t matter, experience doesn’t matter.

Distro doesn’t matter because you will inevitably come across something that you need that doesn’t work on your distribution.

GUI doesn’t matter because no matter what you do you will %100 have to use the terminal and if you can do it once you can do it again.

Experience doesn’t matter because if you’re inexperienced you have to go outside your Comfort zone, if you’re experienced you got there because you like going outside your comfort zone and you will constantly stay in that state.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 3 months ago (8 children)

WTF are you guys doing with your PCs??? I've been running Mint for over a year now and the only time I've used the terminal was to open a port for Chromecast. I browse, I game, I watch shows, etc. maybe I'm just really lucky, idk, it's been nothing but smooth sailing.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago

We have become philosophers of our own, as tweaking Linux has been a way to meditate our stressful mind to overcome the difficulty of touching grasses.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

I personally use it to run a headless docker on fedora 40 server with containers holding jellyfin, filebrowser, pia, qBittorrent a desktop in noVNC a pfsense server, and probably some stuff I forgot.

Why is that not a standard use case?

But in all seriousness I guess I get your point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Meh, don't worry about it. If you are happy with how it's going for you - enjoy the ride! Not everyone needs to be bothered by the terminal. But it IS there if you need it or want to use it.

Besides, if Arch users wanted to be be real gurus they'd be running EMACS and not Arch.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Ffmepg, whisper. Programs that are command-line only and are super useful.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The mindset of a true Slacker.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

The mindset of a true Slacker.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I guess the username explains the response totally.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well your arch broke, didn't it?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It’s arch… of course it broke 😂

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Arch is the distro that did hold the longest against my torture yet, maybe because everything is from the same repo 🤔😂

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That huge chunk of learning required for arch when you've never used Linux before is really hard to imagine when you have years of experience working Linux under your belt. That does not mean it doesn't exist for new users though.

That shit's complex and long. Much as I appreciate the sentiment of "the distro doesn't matter" I really can't agree.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I realised the same thing.

When I was switching from Windows to Linux on my PCs (both at home and at work), I originally wanted to use Debian because I'm most familiar with it and have been running it on servers for 20+ years.

I have to use Fedora at work though - it's a lightly-modified version of Fedora that runs some automatic configuration on first boot and first log in for things like ensuring disk encryption is enabled (including adding randomly-generated secondary keys for IT support), 802.1x certificates for Ethernet and VPN auth, Chef, endpoint security, etc.

Anyways, I started using it and love it. I'm running it at home now too. I realised the difference between distros is much narrower than it used to be.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yes and no for me

Distro doesn't matter because they only differ in package manager and initial configuration, you can always compile things if you really need it.

GUI doesn't matter because you'll end up with all KDE and gnome dependencies installed anyway because your applications need it.

Experience probably matters, but if it doesn't, it may be because there is just so much there to know.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Instructions unclear. I'm running Gnome on Mint.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I wish gentoo was more explored, I felt the same way and then it finally scratched the itch of things working (perhaps even too many options). I actually ended up using gentoo because it was less of a headache to just get things to work in a way that does not feel hacky

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I moved to Arch about 20 years ago because I wanted Gentoo but I didn't want to wait hours for compilation. I remember it fondly though. emerge was kind of a killer feature.

Though I gotta say, I'm a bit more curious now that we have better processors. And I'm curious what I've missed over the years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

With binary packages it’s actually doable on a laptop. Also newer laptops have tons of low power cores which are great for something highly parallel like compiling.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I tried out Gentoo for a while, and just using binaries for the web browser and office suite made the compile times a complete non-issue. The problem I had that made me give it up was that when there is software you want that isn't in the official repos there are a thousand different ways of getting it, and all of them suck. Overlays are supposed to be the solution for that, but man that experience was just awful.

I tried all kinds of things, but in the end all the options basically boiled down to risking breakage, maintaining my own packages, or not using emerge at all, which just feels like it's defeating the whole purpose of being on Gentoo in the first place.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Experience doesn’t matter because if you’re inexperienced you have to go outside your Comfort zone, if you’re experienced you got there because you like going outside your comfort zone and you will constantly stay in that state.

I was experimenting a lot during my early Linux months but then I found what works for me and settled with it. I don't leave my comfort zone much anymore.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 months ago (1 children)

NixOS:

a whistle is blown, people start running out the trenches rifle in hand. Shouting while bombs pounder around, you stay still, disoriented. The general grabs your jacket and starts screaming. You cannot figure a single word of what he says, he just puts a monad into your hands.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And I fucking soared

(Btw)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

LinuxFromScraaatch

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Gentoo: you compile your mother from source, and then give birth to yourself.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (6 children)

The thing about arch, is that if you have a basic understanding of the terminal and computers, the arch wiki can get from that level to a real expert.

So if you ask me, anyone with a basic understanding of the terminal, and a goal to improve, should go with arch.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Can you define a basic understanding of the terminal?

Your basic and my basic could be wildly different.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Know how to use it, understand the basic file system structure, know basic commands (ls, which, cat, mkdir, chmod)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Having completed "Hacknet", the hit 2015 hacker simulator video game.

(Only half joking)

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This was my experience just setting it up as dualboot and not doing super much with it. Sure I failed installing it a few times but I came out with more understanding of file systems, and in the end the wiki told me everything I needed to know.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Oh I feel that, the wiki is a god send. Even for none arch related problems at times.

[–] deuleb_biezelbob 6 points 3 months ago

Arch + manpages + wiki is all you need

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Arch is unironically easy.

You only need to know two commands:

archinstall

and

sudo pacman -Syu

PS: If my 60 year old mom can do it, anyone can.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I installed Arch using archinstall and my system finished with missing KDE and important packages. I was also missing secure boot...

Staying on Debian.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Archinstall works until it doesn't. Recently I tried Luks and BTRFS more than 6 times leading to a script error each and every time. Could I have done something simpler and archinstall work? Possibly. But it offers those things out of the box and for it to fail each and every time ultimately led me back to the wiki to do it manually.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not an accurate depiction of birds...after the helpless phase birds become fledglings where they leave the nest but are still dependent on their parents for food. Social structures vary a lot by species but many remain with parents for quite some time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mean, some bird species have mothers that essentially drop their fledglings to predators to distract from themselves (and their insecurities), or just simply don't feel bothered to actually help raise them to maturity.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The amount of uninformed, stereotyped memery in this comment section is actually unreal

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Gentoo and Slackware are for no mortals

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The only people I know who are still running Slackware are doing it via Unraid (which is built on top of Slackware)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hey, comparing Debian to a snail and its shell is unfair.

It's more like a turtle and its shell.

Turtles can actually be surprisingly fast sometimes!

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